Over the past few months in the so called “DeFi boom” we have seen projects rise up to millions upon millions of valuations only to crash to no near nothing within such a short period of time you could miss it while eating lunch. This has left many investors with great losses and many others looking for actual DeFi platforms that provide a valuable product to the ecosystem and have an actually sustainable model. Due to this, legitimate DeFi protocols such as Compound, Uniswap, Curve and many more have been the real safe havens of DeFi. However, some people might wish to invest in newly created projects for their possibility of much greater returns. This begs the question; can one truly find valuable DeFi platforms that are still undervalued?
What is Datamine?
I’m not talking about the act of “mining” or extracting data here. Instead I am talking about an interesting DeFi platform known as Datamine. Datamine is a DeFi token based on the Ethereum blockchain that has many unique properties. It operates on a dual token system, where you have the main token (DAM) which has a fixed supply and the secondary token (FLUX) that is created by locking up DAM and is then used for the ecosystem of Datamine.
Originally DAM was originally a swap done by members of the Bulwark coin community that existed back in 2017. This ensured a very fair distribution as everyone who owns DAM had to purchase it, as such there are no team/marketing funds and no premine. All of the tokens are distributed fairly and even the largest of holders outside of exchange wallets own no more than 1.5% of the total supply. As such the Datamine ecosystem and token are entirely community owned and driven, meaning there is no team that can exit scam or do as they will with the project. All development and marketing efforts are done in a decentralised manner by the community, a model that seems to lend itself to long-term sustainability like Bitcoin.
The Datamine ecosystem
As of right now the Datamine ecosystem already has two compelling utilities. One lends itself to a more traditional “staking” form with a twist and another that is focused on providing easy to manage high-quality analytics. If one wishes to earn money from their DAM tokens, they are able to lock them in the smart contract in order to earn FLUX tokens. This is the primary purpose of DAM, as it is the only way to generate flux, which is then the driving force of the rest of the ecosystem. Currently 65% of all DAM is locked to produce FLUX at a rate of (0.00000001) FLUX per block (every 13.5 seconds roughly). This might seem small at first until one considers the two other aspects of minting (creating) FLUX.
If one wishes to increase their FLUX production there are 3 ways to do so, they can lock in more DAM, use the time multiplier, or the best way to use the burn multiplier. As your DAM is locked in for longer periods of time you gain a time multiplier which goes up to 3x after 28 days, unlocking your DAM resets this bonus and will need to be relocked for 28 days to reach the 3x bonus again. The burn bonus is a unique feature as it allows you to burn FLUX to mint more in the future. The burn multiplier goes up to 10x and to reach that you must burn 9x the global average burn rate. For example, if the global average of all addresses is 1 FLUX burned per 1 DAM locked then you must burn 9 FLUX per 1 DAM to reach the 10x bonus. The more DAM you have, the more FLUX you will need to burn, which makes using the burn bonus much more lucrative for small holders and much harder for whales, essentially trying to equalise the playing field between smaller players and whales in the ecosystem. This unique two token approach allows there to be demand already built into the core of Datamine, where DAM demand is driven by the FLUX returns and FLUX demand is driven by the burn multiplier. As such, the DAM supply is fixed at 16,876,779 and won’t ever inflate, while the FLUX supply is uncapped, but due to the inherent demand of it the inflation rate is very largely limited as more people burn it.
It is also important to note that the multipliers work retroactively, meaning they apply when you actually mint (aka send to your wallet) your flux, as such if you burn to 10x right before minting you can see an immediate return on the FLUX you can mint. Additionally, they work multiplicatively, so a 5x burn bonus and a 3x time bonus would result in a total 15x bonus, essentially meaning that a person owning 1 DAM earns as if they own 15.
The Analytics side
Of course, even though Datamine attempts to be self-sustainable through the minting and burning model there it must provide something for the wider DeFi ecosystem. Which is where the analytics that is being built on it comes into play. The analytics platform is currently in a closed alpha phase and is planned to go into beta in October, following with a public release soon after. Currently it is built around analysing the movements of Datamine’s own two tokens and assessing effective burning/minting strategies as well as providing this information in an easy to understand format in real time. Eventually, Uniswap analytics are also planned for the platform, providing valuable data on Uniswap pools, transactions and more. The platform will be open for anyone to use, however, priority will be given to users who have burnt more flux if there is a long queue, as such it gives an advantage to users who are in the Datamine ecosystem while not gating the entry to this valuable information.
There are already some platforms attempting to provide analytics such as Dextools, although so far, no platform is perfect, and each has its own share of compromises and missing information. As such, there is still mass demand for DeFi analytics due to how valuable this information can be to traders and investors in deciding their next moves.
Datamine’s security
Similar to my other guides on DeFi platforms, it is no use if a platform provides valuable features if it is at a risk of a hack or exit scam. In this department Datamine is perhaps slightly lacking as the smart contracts have not received a professional audit as of the writing of this article. However, there was a $5000 bounty posted for anyone who is able to find a vulnerabilities in the contract, which so far goes unclaimed and no issues have been raised apart from a known scammer trying to fabricate a vulnerability to claim the bounty. This incident was handled professionally which gives some credibility to the platform. Additionally, there is no one who has admin keys to the contracts, and no one is able to access or change them.
Using Datamine
As currently the analytics platform is yet to be released to the public there is no guide for that (maybe later however?). But I will be showing the simple steps to get started with locking DAM and minting FLUX. Both damcrypto.com and datamine.network domains will take you to the dashboard that is hosted on github to adhere to the decentralised nature of the project. Below is the main view of the dashboard, allowing you to enable minting as well as get a quick glance of the current real-time DAM and FLUX price on uniswap with quick links to buy or sell the tokens.
Already just the dashboard attempts to create some quick-view analytics on the current Datamine ecosystem. Here you can see the amount of DAM locked, how much FLUX is being burnt and where the supply of FLUX is going.
A minting calculator can also be found where all parameters can be changed to approximate future earnings. Simply click the “forecasting calculator button”
It is very simple to lock in your DAM and mint FLUX, all you need is to press enable, then send a transaction in with the amount of DAM you want locked. You can then mint flux from the dashboard, and if you scroll down you can view your burning and balance statistics as well as the ability to unlock DAM.
Of course, I suggest you do your own additional research before investing into anything. You should understand the ecosystem and how something works before delving and investing into it. Thanks for reading.
